Voyage 10. MUSIC MADE OF BODY AND SOUL

Voyage 10. MUSIC MADE OF BODY AND SOUL

/ΕΛΛΗΝΙΚΑ/ Περιήγηση 10η. ΜΟΥΣΙΚΗ ΨΥΧΗ ΤΕ ΚΑΙ ΣΩΜΑΤΙ

Venus of Brassempouy: fragment of a statuette in mammoth ivory – the oldest known representation of a human face (23.000 BCE)

● Man: a Musical Being ● Music and Nature ● Utilitarian Art ● What Is Music and Language? What’s Their Origin? ● The Embryo’s Audio Stimuli and Baby Talk ● Talent ● The Art of Soul or of Beauty ● Ecstasy and Catharsis ● “Anastenária” and the Rhythm’s Impact on the Brain ● Ethos of Music

by Michales Loukovikas

 
MAN IS BY NATURE A MUSICAL BEING; meaning that the song, the combination of music and lyrics, mainly together with movement or dance, has always been a fundamental characteristic of humans, serving their respective needs. Besides, music, speech, and dance, a “Holy Trinity” according to Palamás, show how close the relationship between sound, body and soul is.

“Music – speech – dance: a Holy Trinity” (Kostés Palamás)

The strange thing for us is that the ancients, even the primitives, felt the impact of musical sound onto their bodies much more intensely than modern humans. Obviously, Christianity and the Occidental mentality are largely responsible for the enormous degradation of our senses. Thus experts of many disciplines are now required to work together in order to fully understand this subject in depth.

Lascaux cave painting of hunt

Natural sounds played a key role in the genesis of music: sounds of Nature, human voices, the sounds of their tools, constituted raw “materials” that gradually began to take shape. According to Darwin, a primary stimulus has been the animal cries, especially during breeding season, when an orgasm of sounds and movements prevails, so rich and varied that man inevitably imitates responding to that call of Nature’s Choir. Man, however, as a species of the animal kingdom, has congenitally had his own “repertoire” which he gradually enriched – initially by imitation and later by inspiration.

The emergence of art was directly linked to elementary manifestations of magic, even before the latter was systematized to some form of religion. Cave paintings, of a much later period compared to music, are examples of utilitarian art: men tried to exorcise the animal they depicted so as to have plenty of game, or propitiate its “spirit” in case of an awe-inspiring beast. That is why the cave paintings are usually not found in the “living room” of the cave, but deep inside, at the “sanctuary”…

Spirit propitiation had broader applications: e.g. to natural phenomena that seemed supernatural, or during work time to coordinate movements, or even to master the “spirit” of the stone or wood that men wished to turn into a tool. Music played a key role in such cases. But it was lost in the mists of time. Today, millennia later, we can comfortably admire the cavemen’s performance in visual arts. But who has ever listened to their songs?

The question above is rather rhetoric. However, there is another question that is crucial to be answered: What is music? What’s its origin?

Indian Ghost Dance in eastern California: the figures form a circle dance.

What is music? What’s its origin?

Music is found everywhere, in every culture or civilization, even the most isolated tribes: it is a characteristic of the human species – perhaps of other species, as well. At any rate, music is influenced by all aspects of a culture or civilization, including socio-economic organization, lifestyle, climate, technology… The emotions and ideas expressed by music, the situations in which it is played, the attitudes toward musicians and composers – all these vary according to space and time.

As we have said, music has probably had its origin in the sounds and rhythms of Nature. Men most likely imitated these phenomena using similar patterns with repetition and tonality. Even today musicians at times deliberately imitate natural sounds: folk fiddlers trill like birds, while Beethoven’s “Pastoral” 6th Symphony recreates the soundscape of a thunderstorm. Sometimes onomatopoeia is related to shamanistic beliefs or practices.^(a) It also serves entertainment and edutainment, or practical purposes (such as lure of animals in hunt).

• ^(a) A shaman is a person regarded as having access to the “world of spirits”, entering into a trance state (very different from normal waking consciousness), and acting as a diviner or healer.

Magdalenian horse (15.000-10.000 BCE): a game at a time long before it was tamed.

If the imitation of a bird song is considered music, then the bird song itself may also be regarded as music! Indeed, according to a study of zoomusicology,^(b) bird songs are based on musical principles: those of repetition and transformation. And it’s not only birds: whales and dolphins have also exceptional vocal capabilities, while monkeys are unrivaled on drums and percussion while beating hollow logs, perhaps in order to demarcate their territories, creating rhythmic patterns in which some experts detect elements of “dialogue”, “call and response”.

• ^(b) Zoomusicology is the study of “music” made by non-human animals, or rather the musical aspects of sounds produced or received by them as a means of their communication. It is described as the “aesthetic use of sound communication among animals.”

Of course, everything depends on our definition of music – that is, whether a “musician” has the intention to stir up emotion through his sounds, which is probably linked to his ability to reflect about time (past and future). Men became artists sometime between 60 and 30 thousand years ago creating cave paintings, jewelry and other artifacts, while they started burying their dead with rituals. It was a form of “cultural revolution”. If we assume that those new forms of behaviour suggested the emergence of consciousness, then music – as we know it – appeared in the same period. But this is a rather narrow conception of music. As it usually happens in Africa so far, in prehistory too the concept of music was broader, including dance and worship. At that time it also served communication among the members of a group of people helping to coordinate action and strengthen their bonds. Thus, its role was crucial to their survival.

Charles Darwin, by George Richmond

Music evokes strong emotions and opens paths to other states of awareness. In general, strong emotions are associated with evolution (reproduction and survival). Darwin pointed out the importance of music to sexual selection.^(c) Singing and dancing require large energy reserves. Therefore, a singer-dancer, like a peacock displaying its feathers, is more likely to attract a mate to date. But there is a counterargument: in most species using singing in the selection of mates, it is the female that chooses and the male that sings – as a rule alone. In the human species, however, music is mostly a team sport where everyone is involved. Man is the only mammal having mixed choirs (with men, women and children). Something similar is found only in certain species of Australian and African songbirds with males and females singing in chorus.

• ^(c) “When we treat of sexual selection we shall see that primeval man, or rather some early progenitor of man, probably first used his voice in producing true musical cadences, that is in singing, as do some of the gibbon-apes at the present day; and we may conclude from a widely-spread analogy, that this power would have been especially exerted during the courtship of the sexes, – would have expressed various emotions, such as love, jealousy, triumph, – and would have served as a challenge to rivals. It is, therefore, probable that the imitation of musical cries by articulate sounds may have given rise to words expressive of various complex emotions.” (Darwin, The Descent of Man)

The first musical “instrument” was obviously the voice of man who, even before he could master speech, had a vast range of expressive sounds: singing, humming, whistling (another vast range), producing various sounds through the mouth, imitating natural sounds, shouting, laughing, crying, coughing, yawning… (See Darwin’s The Origin of Species on music and speech). Add motion to all these sounds: not only dance, but also grimaces, gestures and movements of individual body parts (head, arms and legs). Similarly, the first percussion “instruments” were hand claps, finger snaps, stones, wood and whatever could be used to accentuate rhythm. Man-made instruments appeared much later when humans started making tools.

The oldest known musical instrument is the Divje Babe flute possibly made by the Neanderthals and found in Slovenia.

Let me make clear by the way that talking about “men”, in fact, I refer to the Hominini. The oldest tools found in today’s Tanzania were made 2.6 million years ago, that is, before the emergence of the various human species (Homo). We suppose that the first tools were made by Australopithecus who transmitted this knowledge to Homo habilis. Our ancestors passed to a new phase of tool-making 1.7 million years ago with Homo erectus. I maintain, therefore, that sound preceded speech and that music, song, a capella (without instrumental accompaniment), emerged together with voice as a characteristic of some Hominini or even Hominids. Besides, we already know that music was not born by Homo sapiens – who, as they say, were musically not as talented as the Neanderthals!

“The Singing Neanderthals”
(Steven Mithen)
In the beginning was the sound:
music is older than speech

In his study The Singing Neanderthals: The Origins of Music, Language, Mind and Body, Steven Mithen, an archaeologist and professor of early prehistory at the University of Reading in England, expands mainly two ideas: a) the parallel development of what modern man calls music and language, and b) his own original idea that the Neanderthals had a peculiar proto-music/language: it was holistic (not composed of segmented elements), manipulative (influencing emotional states and hence behaviour of oneself and others), multimodal (using both sound and movement), musical (temporally controlled, rhythmic, and melodic), and mimetic (utilizing sound symbolism and gesture) – “a pre-linguistic musical mode of thought and action.” That is why, as Manuel de Falla and Federico García Lorca have said, “many suppose that chanting is the earliest form of language.” (See Voyage 4).

In her review on Mithen’s book, Ellen Dissanayake of the University of Washington in Seattle initially lists the… ocean of knowledge such a study requires: evolutionary theory; human evolution (social lifestyle, environment); palaeoarchaeology (linguistic and musical abilities and their development); anatomy (ear, vocal tract, brain and musical capacities); neurobiology (brain chemistry, musical cognition and emotion, neuroanatomy of music); origin and evolution of language (similarities and differences with music, semantics, syntax, prosody); music-like communication systems in other animals (non-human primates, whales, birds, etc) and their relevance to human communication; music psychology and linguistic behaviour in infants and children; ethnomusicology; the art and practice of music; as well as the findings of music therapy and the psychology of musical emotion. We can additionally mention biomusicology and evolutionary musicology.

A Neanderthal woman depicted in National Geographic in an aggressive stance is rather misleading since, according to the accompanying article, the genes that are associated with the aggressive behaviour of modern man were probably absent in the Neanderthal DNA. This may explain their disappearance…

Those “Singing Neanderthals”, according to Mithen, had a vocal tract and respiratory control that could have enabled speech, but they lacked the neural network that was necessary for language. This simply means that in the beginning was the sound: music preceded speech.^(d) Moreover, pre-sapiens hominids such as the Neanderthals lacked metaphorical thought – the ability to have in mind at the same time information from several different cognitive domains. Symbolic artifacts have not been found in their dwelling sites, indicating the absence of symbolic thought and hence symbolic utterance: spoken language. Yet the challenges faced in such a hostile environment during the Ice Age required complex emotional communication and cooperation. So they developed a “music-like communication system that was more complex and more sophisticated than that found in any of the previous species of Homo”. Mithen emphasizes the importance of “emotional intelligence” – the ability to express one’s feelings with face, voice, and body, and decode the emotional signals of others.

Music as the Mother of Speech
(Rousseau, Herder, Humboldt, Darwin)

• ^(d) Music (singing) as the Mother of Speech (language) is an idea shared by Rousseau, Herder, Humboldt, and Darwin. We get an idea if we examine pronunciation in several languages. Closer to the original source are tonal languages, such as Chinese, where each syllable is uttered with a different note or pitch. Then it’s the pitch accent languages, such as ancient Hellenic, where only the stressed syllable is uttered at a higher pitch. According to Dionysius of Halicarnassus, the interval between the accented and non-accented syllables reached to an anything but negligible fifth interval (e.g. Mi-Si, see also our previous Voyage 9). Lastly, there are dynamic languages like Modern Greek with the stress given through an increased volume of the voice but not a higher pitch. We can understand the difference in ancient Hellenic poetry where the accents had no effect on the rhythm of the poetic metres as they would if the stress was dynamic. The poetic rhythm was musical, prosodic (alternating long and short vowels), not dynamic. [Προσῳδία – ancient prosody: originally a song with music accompaniment].

Singing was also preferable to talking. Why were the symbols of spoken words less reliable than an emotional melody? What were the pros and cons of language?

What is language? What’s its origin?

Sleeping antelope, Sahara, southern Algeria

“What is language? What’s its origin?” – reads the notice at the entrance of a Congress Palace where a thought-provoking international symposium is taking place. Inside the building, of course, everyone… disagrees with everyone else; however, there is a recurring theme of almost paramount consent, something that escaped even Darwin’s attention: a prerequisite for the emergence of language, they say, is that there must be trust within the tribe – what we now call “society”! Some kind of social transformation, therefore, generated unprecedented levels of public trust, liberating a potential for linguistic creativity. Under normal conditions, as the saying goes, “words are cheap”, “double-talk”, unreliable symbols on which the tribe could not count for survival – that is, language was not trusted to become an evolutionarily stable strategy.

When a cat purrs, the signal constitutes direct evidence of the animal’s contented state. We trust the signal because it just can’t fake that sound. Vocal calls of the primates may not be so trustworthy. Their social intelligence is characterized as “Machiavellian” – self-serving and without moral scruples. Monkeys and apes often attempt to deceive one another, while at the same time remaining constantly on guard against falling victim to deception themselves! Paradoxically, this very trait is theorized as blocking the evolution of a language-like communication among them! A verbal signal sounds like the shout “Wolves!” by a shepherd trying to fool the others in the well-known pedagogical moralizing story. Once proven false nobody takes it for granted or even cares. Therefore, socially reliable institutions are necessary, where every scoundrel, either “monkey” or “shepherd”, is accountable. In a hunter-gatherer society, a basic mechanism inspiring trust is the collective ritual. (In our society, all the above adequately explain our crisis…)

Baby talk and the embryo’s audio stimuli

The absence of features on the face of “Venus” of Willendorf (28.000-25.000 BCE), except those linked with reproduction, may imply a Mother Goddess.

Last but not least is what we call “baby talk” – not the talk of a baby still unable to speak, but the one used by adults (usually mothers) while addressing infants, touching and caressing them: a melodic and undulating language, combined with strong gestures, exaggerated facial expressions and rhythmic head and body movements. This is indeed a language as the baby understands the meaning of all these sounds and movements: that is, comprehends the mother’s intentions. In this sense, such a language is similar to music having two main functions: to strengthen the mother-child relationship, and help the infant to speak. This way his/her chances of survival increase. Man’s ability to synchronize himself with an external pulse – which is probably unknown to other mammals, including primates – derived from the primordial mother-infant interaction which in time transformed itself into a proto-music, and also a proto-language.

“Baby talk” has a similar “vocabulary” in all cultures. The way mothers and babies raise and lower their voices, change simultaneously expressions and move their hands is similar everywhere, despite linguistic differences such as between musical and dynamic languages. The reasons may be genetic or environmental – in the sense that all embryos grow in a similar environment and can hear twenty weeks before birth, far longer than other animals, most of which cannot hear before birth. During these weeks, the human fetus can also perceive movement and orientation. In addition it senses the emotional state of the mother via the internal sounds of her body (voice, heartbeat, footsteps, digestion, etc.) and in this way adjusts its postnatal demands (e.g. crying), improving the chances of its survival. The embryo’s capacity to learn and remember sound patterns seems to confirm this theory. In this case, the internal sounds of the human body and their relationship with the emotional state may be associated with the relationship between audio-rhythmic patterns in music and their strong emotional charge.

A maenad (bacchante) with a tympanum and a satyr with diaulos (double aulos)

“The human being is a musical being by man’s very nature”. (Iégor Reznikoff)

“Man”, Iégor Reznikoff remarked,^(e) “is a speaking being. However, I am absolutely sure that he is also a musical, a singing being, like the birds. We know that the various species of birds are also distinguished by the way they sing. The same happens with humans who are distinguished not only by their speech, but also by their singing.

• ^(e) Reznikoff’s remarks were recorded by Despina Paisidou-Lazaridou in Delphi in 1986 for the radio program “I Learn As I Live” (ERT-3). It was when I started “flying” in the airwaves as a “chronicler”, presenter and music supervisor during the first round of the program on “The Chronicle of Music”. The making of a radio program, however, was something that I learned watching the producer Katy Vlachou with her immense patience and open mind: she let me present in public mass media what I was not allowed to do at the time in a… private one (Thessalonica newspaper).

The Education of Achilles by Chiron (fresco from Herculaneum)

“These features, I believe, are part of human nature. They are deeply connected with man’s organic nature – his ears and throat, that is, his vocal capacities. That’s how he is born and created since his conception. A child e.g. can hear even when it is in the womb of its mother as a fetus and remembers some elements of music and its mother’s voice or her song.^(f)

• ^(f) “The voices and audio stimuli to which a fetus is exposed during pregnancy are not only perceived but also recorded in its memory”, a scientific team concluded in a study. “Thus, if as a fetus it listened to soft music of natural instruments, as an infant he/she immediately calms and quiets down under the same sounds, while another baby, who had no such experience when it was in the belly of its mother, keeps on screaming”…
  Besides, except the “Singing Neanderthals”, there are also the “Singing Embryos”! A new research showed that fetuses react to sound stimuli and “sing”… Researchers at Institut Marquès in Barcelona showed that a fetus can detect sounds and even react moving its mouth and tongue, proving that the ears of the embryo are fully developed by the 16th week of pregnancy. The lead researcher said that the fetuses responded to music moving their mouths as if they were trying to talk or sing. Music activates the part of the brain associated with communication and when the embryos hear it they react with movements similar to those of the cry, which is the first stage before speaking and singing.

“Music is deeply rooted in humans. Singing is a characteristic of the human species. It is not something recent in man’s social life. The mechanism of hearing and its relationship with speech is characterized by complexity and located deep inside the brain. Thus it cannot be something recent. In short: the human being is a musical being by man’s very nature.”

Generally speaking, the different species are born as tabula rasa regarding their acquired qualities – those that must be gained after birth, depending on the current conditions faced by each species for its survival. But they bear in their DNA all those inherited capacities and qualities that emerged as acquired (upright position, articulation, etc.) and ensured the survival of the species during the millennia of its evolution. It is where all the wisdom of the past is stored – together, of course, with the natural musical capacities.

The Music Lesson (also from Herculaneum, a city richer than neighbouring Pompeii, early 1st century AD)

However, talent, an innate musical inclination or “musical ear”, do not characterize all men but rather a minority. How comes that some persons can sing beautifully or at least correctly, while others, who equally love music, sing out of tune?

“There is innate musical disposition, musical talent, which is often hereditary: see the Bach family”, said Professor Demetris Thémeles “But in general terms, everyone can learn music up to a point. Most people sing out of tune because they’ve had no proper musical education – except in some cases where they may have some physical problem e.g. hearing impairment. Or they may listen properly and have some feel for music, but face some problem in the larynx muscles. There are cases of distinguished musicians, productive composers, who are ‘cacophonous’, that is, they cannot sing well because of such problems.”

Nevertheless, in the Third World and, moreover, in the countryside, anywhere far from metropolitan urban centres, that is, wherever children are naturally brought up, almost everyone can sing and dance well. How comes? Here’s an answer by Ellen Dissanayake:

“It is not spoken language itself that overlays or stunts musical ability, but the factors in modernized societies that have made music a specialty – individuality, competitiveness, compartmentalization, and institutionalization – reinforced by the high degree of literate (not oral improvisatory) training required to read (and compose) musical scores as well as literary texts. In small-scale pre-modern societies (and in any large modern sub-Saharan African city, as well in children anywhere who are customarily exposed to frequent communal musical activity), everyone participates in music – regularly, spontaneously, and wholeheartedly – and benefits thereby from the many adaptive advantages” it offers.

Iégor Reznikoff

You can see, therefore, how crucial is the role of the mother, as well as that of the family or social environment in general, for the development of a child’s innate musical inclination. This must be the explanation for the existence not only of musical families, but also of musical tribes such as gypsies and blacks. Not everything is hereditary, despite the important role of heredity: the potential capacities must be cultivated; otherwise they remain dormant, inert, like some atrophic member.

“We can say that African Americans have this divine gift”, Reznikoff commented, referring to the innate inclination, the special talent. “Africans have a long tradition in music and singing. Furthermore, they have kept some primitive ways of expression and emotion, and thus they are probably closer to antiquity. The ancient Greeks also loved singing and dancing very much, as the Arabs do now.

“Since we are human beings, with the senses of audition and vision, it happens that we have constants in art. These constants in music have to do with the natural laws of resonance and consonance: when a chord is vibrating, it follows the laws that govern the sound, producing sounds and harmonics that delight our ears – therefore, our bodies respond.

“It is striking that an instrument like the cithara can be found in all cultures. The behaviour of a string and our bodies is the same everywhere. Something similar happens with the auloi. Note that these instruments have been used in different ways in all cultures. But with few exceptions, and apart from modern Western civilization, we can see everywhere the same musical laws to apply. It is a global concept of consonance precisely because we are dealing with a natural law.

“This concept, however, was lost since the early 19th century when the piano was introduced into music changing the natural tuning of the instruments; because the piano is tuned differently, with the equal intervals of the tempered scale. This tuning is wrong if we consider it from the point of view of natural resonance. It is due to the enormous development of music – but a kind of cultivated, sentimental, conceptual music which has abandoned its natural foundation that is rooted in our body and soul.

“The same has happened in painting: we have the ancient art or even iconography, and then we have the art of beauty, even if it depicts saints or Theotokos. See Raphael’s Madonna: she is really beautiful, her movements are beautiful, and art lies in this beauty, not in the power exerted deep inside your soul by an icon. We have lost these deep roots related to our biological bodies – because we must not forget that we are material beings obeying to natural laws. Nowadays art is too conceptual as e.g. abstract art, or even electronic music with computers.

“In antiquity people had delicate, fine ears catching all nuances. The lyre was a ‘soft’ instrument like the old traditional ones. When one listened to music on those instruments, he used his spirit even more – let us also remember the long texts of old songs. Now, of course, we have all those huge pieces of machinery with the many decibels! All instruments are amplified and modified for that purpose. The violin is already a ‘hard’ instrument like the piano.

“I personally believe in a natural approach of antiquity – without imitating and copying it. We must go back to the delicate acoustics of antiquity, because finally man remains the same body and soul. These natural laws – so rich that they have created all those cultures – are like oxygen for us. In the big cities, of course, we may live in air pollution but we are not made for this: it is better for us to breathe fresh air…

“Music’s purpose in antiquity was not just fun. It mainly had to do with the invisible world. This is also true for the Pythagoreans, and later for the Platonic school or previously for the Orphic tradition which influenced the Christian Church. For the Orphic tradition, music actually serves as a link to the invisible: for the preparation of the journey of the soul after death to eternity”…

Orpheus, by Marc Chagall

The “labyrinth” of Reznikoff’s thought and the contraposition between “soft” and “hard” instruments may confuse us. The key to grasping its essence lies in that apt example from the art of painting. Sweet melodies and gentle voices e.g. in most lullabies are the equivalent of Raphael’s Madonna. Quite the contrary was what Plato has suggested about children that cannot go promptly to sleep: “mothers do not offer them peace, but rock them instead, and in this artless way they make the kids fall asleep”. If you experiment, they say, you see that the… Platonic technique is highly effective!

A similar misunderstanding seems to obsess psychotherapists who choose music with soft sounds, having waters trickling and birds singing as a… garnish in the background. Exactly the opposite was what the ancients were after during their psychotherapeutic rituals with the deliberately intense and monotonously repetitive music.

“Fire cleanses, while water purifies”, said Plutarch. Catharsis in ancient Hellas was the mental and moral purification through Dionysian ecstasy.^(g) Using suitable melodies and rhythms, they caused the mentally disturbed to flush to such a degree that a reaction would follow bringing him back to his previous normal condition. They were methods of magic surviving even in the “civilized” world until the 60s. Now that we have become so very “cultured”, musical sounds can hardly excite us…

• ^(g) This is the original meaning of the word and not the one suggested in periods of political corruption. Catharsis, according to Aristotle, was what the audience in a Greek tragedy was subjected to through feelings of pity and fear caused by the heroes’ suffering and tragic end.

Catharsis was the mental and moral purification through Dionysian ecstasy. The spectators of tragedy were subjected to catharsis through feelings of pity and fear caused by the heroes’ suffering and tragic end. (Aristotle)

Cybele and Attis, three Korybantes, Aeon, Helios, Phosphorus, Selene, Hesperus, Poseidon, Thetis and Gaia, on the Parabiago plate (2nd-4th century AD).

“There was a close link between swamps (sources of infections and fever), the subsequent neuromental disorders and their cure with music in the therapeutic rituals of the Korybantes and the Bacchantes.^(h) These data allow a better reading of ancient texts. We can reconstruct them not anymore in an entirely irrational context with widespread mysticism, but in a reality with tragic experiences in the time line.

• ^(h) Korybantes: priests of Cybele (or Rhea) in Phrygia, connected with Dionysus-Bacchus, performing orgiastic dances accompanied by cymbals, rattles, auloi and tympana (tambourines) [> korybantism (catharsis)]. We have already met Dionysus’ followers, the Bacchantes, Bacchae or Maenads (< mania), as Orpheus’ slayers (see previous Voyage 9).

“Thus, the biological and pathological cause of hallucinations reappears as an archetype of the mythological and dreamlike world of fantasy. Although the monotheistic religions expelled the ancient gods who played a therapeutic role, they did not eliminate malaria – a scourge as old as the world but always present. This Thraco-Phrygian and Orphico-Pythagorean music therapy survived more or less in some folk, religious or pagan, traditions.

“What did these specific kinds of music consist of? What level of body and soul did they affect on? How and why were they effective? The texts give us an idea. Can we get even further? Obviously, if we work on this rich and diverse file with a fortunate conjuncture of data of the geographical and ethnological hematology, and medical anthropology – sciences that already contain a wealth of information – adding the results of ethnomusicological studies, without forgetting medieval and ancient musicology, either Oriental or Occidental.”

Bacchic Dance of Maenads in a Wood, by Gustave Doré

With this… Sibyllic synopsis of her paper, Music in the Therapeutic Rituals of the Korybantes and the Bacchantes, Denise Jourdan-Hemmerdinger tried to give some idea to her audience at the 3rd Musicological Symposium in Delphi in 1988. Unfortunately, she had a formidable opponent: relentless time. Within a very short time – granted to each speaker – she had to expand on her vast topic that could be the subject of a separate symposium. The… machine gun tempo she chose to say “everything” in time eventually proved to be a boomerang for her and her extremely interesting topic.

Scientists, however, albeit disconnectedly, managed to do some ethnological, musicological and medical research in India, Indochina, Siberia, Ethiopia, Senegal, Haiti, Native Americans (Indians and Eskimos) and elsewhere. In our territory such phenomena were observed in Magna Graecia, especially in the area of Taranto, with the famous tarantella dance that was formerly used as a key element of the musical exorcism to counteract the poison of the tarantula spider.

Part of the same tradition is a mainly Thracian, centuries old fire ritual called anastenária (nestinarstvo). The oldest written information about such barefoot dances on smoldering embers is found in Euripides’ The Bacchae. Later Strabo spoke of Artemis’ priestesses in Asia Minor and Italy performing such dances at will. In Byzantium the dancers were called “psychária” or “asthenária” (hence anastenária or nestinari), while around 1800 such rituals were prevalent not only in the Balkans but also throughout Anatolia.

Anastenária’s most striking feature is probably this “incombustibility”, or “immunity from fire” – the (seeming, at least) negation of a natural law. This part of the ritual stirs our imagination so much that almost everyone forgets to mention the key role of music and dance that, as many experts say, contribute to an emotional release and thus have a therapeutic effect on the participants. In a sense, therefore, the ceremony is a psychotherapeutic ritual system.

Music and dance contribute to an emotional release and thus have a therapeutic effect on the participants.

These systems, according to Levi-Strauss, provide the patient with a gateway to express inexpressible states. During the therapeutic process the participant receives from outside a social myth that has no conflicts and, therefore, does not correspond to his previous personal condition. In this context, reality is compelled to identify with this social myth. Without music and dance, however, methexis is not possible:

“Monotonous music”, the psychiatrist Constantinos Constantinides wrote in his Notes on Fire Walking of Anastenária and a Possible Explanation of Incombustibility, “is a prerequisite to a change of mental mood, creating an equivalent emotional state, and triggering the subcortical (motor and emotional) centres, so as everything is automatically and easily executed, eliminating the inhibitory effect of the cortex.

“Motivated in general also by music, dance is known as a largely automatic event and as such a new prerequisite to the creation of the whole mental ecstatic state, and even more if it is religious. That is why all primitive religions are ‘danced’; all happy events are ‘danced’. When dancing, there is a peculiar emotional state; there is more automation and unconscious function; there is more or less self-absorption and a break of contact with the environment. One could say that dance is a certain step to ecstasy, opens the way to the phenomenon of ecstasy.”

“Dance is a certain step to ecstasy, opens the way to the phenomenon of ecstasy.” (Constantinos Constantinides)

“Music in particular seems to coordinate a tendency to group unification”, another psychiatrist, Pantelés Kranidiotes, commented on his part, analyzing Anastenaria as a Psychosomatic Phenomenon. “C[onstantinos] Romeos realized just that, saying ‘music makes the human soul to feel such desolation that it desires to mingle with the other dancers seeking to let it go’. On the other hand, P[olydoros] Papachristodoulou underlines the impact of music on these people saying that music ‘exerts some particular influence on the nervous system of hysterical, naïve peasants’.

Davul

“But anyway, regardless of the quality of the receiver, everyone would perceive this fascinating power of music, if above all he experienced the crucially overwhelming davul in the ‘hangout’, where ‘all the spectators were agitated and rocked’ under its sounds.

“Emotional arousal is inevitable when music is more familiar. This is obviously the aim of conflating this religious ceremony with songs, which clearly translate the various deepest emotions of the people’s psyche and where above all is the dominion of heroic elements, which can only bring about an arousing, wild ecstasy.

“This combination seems much more efficient to induce the required emotional orgy than the ecclesiastical chants and hymns, which are totally absent in this religious ceremony, as they produce a rather static ecstasy.

“This music of fire dancers, which over the centuries is familiar to them, is a creation and property of their own emotional universe and that is why it can definitely stir it and indeed with an intensely arousing way. But here it seems that rhythm plays the main role in music and – as the musicologist Mr. [Pantelés] Kavakópoulos says – ‘what excites the fire dancers is the davul with its varying rhythms’.”⁽ⁱ⁾

• ⁽ⁱ⁾ It is obvious that these psychiatrists look on the fire dancers “from on high”: they are “hysterical, naïve peasants” with “the people’s psyche”, immersed in “an arousing, wild ecstasy” that is described as an “emotional orgy”, under the sounds of a music that is a “property of their own emotional universe”… They recognize, however, that the impact of this music and dance, in that particular environment, is equally catalytic “regardless of the quality of the receiver”, apparently having in mind that now among the fire dancers we can also find the names of several “hysterical, naïve”… scientists and intellectuals!

Relief of a maenad holding a tympanum

Rhythm, inextricably connected to dance, is the first musical element man experiences. Even now, the first sound the fetus hears is its mother’s rhythmic heartbeat, long before it enjoys her singing – if, of course, she has a sweet voice. But even if she doesn’t, the pulse is there, recorded in the deepest subcortical centres of the brain; when excited, man’s inhibitions are neutralized and that’s how he is overwhelmed with ecstasy, acting not as an individual but as a member of a group.^(j) Melody, therefore, the second element of music, is intentionally monotonous and persistently repetitious, while the lyrics are just as rudimentary: precisely to prevent the re-activation of the cortex and to achieve the culmination of ecstasy.

• ^(j) Music has been my first profession already since my high school years next to my father, Iannes Loukovikas. I remember that since then, due also to my knowledge on music, I wondered, and was annoyed, as well, whenever an audience glorified a drummer, or anyone playing percussion, in his solo, although his performance was not as difficult as the other musicians’, who nevertheless never received such a warm and loud applause. The answer to this childish question of mine is given in this Voyage…

The first sound a fetus hears is its mother’s heartbeat recorded deep inside the brain; when excited, man’s inhibitions are neutralized and, overwhelmed with ecstasy, acts not as an individual but as a member of a group.

Cybele with a tympanum, bronze statuette (2nd century AD)

All that could not go unnoticed by ancient Greek philosophers who have seen with their own eyes how crucial the role of rhythm is for the preservation, modification or loss of ethos in music. Socrates, Plato, Aristotle and others have investigated the ethos of rhythm, melody, genera and harmonies or modes, not only because music was the foundation of education, but also because – quite rightly – they considered music as a form of language, capable of expressing as much as speech and exerting a catalytic effect on people, especially youth.

“There is nothing among people that is performed without music”, Aristides Quintilianus used to say, while Plutarch noted on the young people’s education that “the formation and preparation to be good [citizen is achieved] through music”, for Orpheus’ art has a beneficial effect “on everyone and every well-instructed act”, concluding: “Foul music and wicked songs lead to prodigal morals and unmanly lives, and men to indulgence and flabbiness and effeminacy.”

The ethos of music is generally distinguished as exuberant – the one causing agitation or excitement; restrained – that is, the opposite; or serene – that calms down. Apparently these comprehensive philosophical studies were based on observations on ancient folk rituals similar to the musical therapeutic ceremonies. Philosophers have found that every rhythmic or melodic movement causes certain emotional reactions, positive or negative – depending on the intended purpose. Thus they concluded that the sounds with the beneficial effects should be praised and the others to be condemned.

The ethos of music – of rhythm, melody, genera and harmonies or modes – was distinguished as exuberant, restrained, or serene.

Naturally, the concept of ethos, which was the focus of attention of every philosopher, was also used for the condemnation of every musical innovation by the conservatives, as we have already seen in our previous Voyage. In no way, however, does this fact mean that ethos is worthless for us. Why else should that ancient Hellenic concept be adopted by Persians and Arabs?

On the other hand, isn’t this concept completely unknown today? Why should we care about the ethos of music (and not only of music) in an exceptionally unethical era in every respect? Isn’t it an… anachronism?

Dear reader, my dearest fellow traveler, don’t you think that having come thus far, it means there is a deeper and serious reason?

• << Voyage 9. “DO NOT MALTREAT OUR MUSIC!”
• >> Chronicle 1. SAILING AROUND – PERIPLUS

After the Voyages of the MEDITERRANEAN PERIPLUS,
let’s go on to the Chronicles of ONCE UPON A… WAVE!

“It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change.”
(Charles Darwin)

Voyage 8. “ALL MUSIC IS THRACIAN AND ASIAN”

Voyage 8. “ALL MUSIC IS THRACIAN AND ASIAN”

/ΕΛΛΗΝΙΚΑ/ Περιήγηση 8η. “ΘΡΑΚΙΑ ΚΑΙ ΑΣΙΑΤΙΣ Η ΜΟΥΣΙΚΗ”

● Musical Instruments’ Origin ● Psalteries, Multi-String Instruments: Qanun and Santur ● Diapason, Harmony and Polyphony ● Music and Poetry ● Music and Nation ● Folk and Erudite Music ● Hydraulis, Hydraulics and Pneumatics ● Crusades

by Michales Loukovikas

…“and all music is thought to be Thracian and Asian.” (Strabo)

AN APOPHTHEGM such as the above by the famous historian and geographer on the prevailing opinion in his era (64 BCE – 24 CE) about the Thracian and Asian origin of all music – hence also its instruments – actually recurs again and again like a leitmotiv and also as a reminder to all those who start from the Thracian Orpheus’ lyre and end up to General Makryiannes’ tambourás…

“In Tsakoniá one comes upon the most ancient Tsakonian dance that is characterized by its Apollonian paeonic rhythm of five beats, the snake-like cycling, circling, folding and unfolding of the dance company, with their coryphaeus [leader] dancing around them and sometimes opposite the second dancer, reminding us of a Pythic nomos [Pythian law or canon] of dance and music (Apollo’s battle against Python),^(a) and not of Theseus and Ariadne’s imaginary threads, as it is usually proclaimed thoughtlessly and irresponsibly by Athenian dance companies.”

• ^(a) Nomos was the most important type of musical composition and interpretation in ancient Hellas. The Pythian or Pythic nomos, played on the homonymous aulos, was created by Sakadas and won him the first prize of auletic art in the Pythian Games in 586 BCE. His aim was to describe the battle between Apollo and Python. Thus, it’s been the first known example of program music – the one describing a theme, in contrast with the absolute or abstract or pure music (see also Chronicle 1: SAILING AROUND PERIPLUS).

Simon Karas

As long as one is preoccupied with the ancients’ exaltation, that is, as long as he is just a… carrier of the “virus”, there is no big problem. What happens, however, if he becomes symptomatic and possessed by “ancestor-mania”? The result is more than obvious in the above-cited quotation from a text on the record with Songs of the Peloponnese, issued by the Society for the Dissemination of National Music, and written by Simon Karas himself – despite his admittedly immense and invaluable contribution on this subject.

Such were the claims put forward in all seriousness from both sides, as if it mattered much whether the Tsakonian dance reminded us of a Pythic nomos or if it reenacted, faithfully or not, the escape from the Labyrinth, while the… Minotaur was anything but dead, and Karas pointed his finger at him immediately afterwards:

“In the once resounding with musical instruments Peloponnese”, he complained, “there is a problem if you try to find musical instruments worthy of their names. Much labour and effort was needed on our part in order to find a clarino [folk clarinet], a violin, or a laouto [folk lute] in entire prefectures, and on many occasions to transport musicians many kilometres away so that they could match with others and form a company.”

Qanun (psaltery)

This “Pythic nomos” mentality made Karas claim that almost all folk instruments played today or allegedly used in the past in Greece were Hellenic in origin. In a similar text on the record with Songs of Constantinople and the Sea of Marmara, he wrote:

“The psaltery qanun together with the ancient Greek and Byzantine thambura [tambur], thanks to the former’s many latches [mandals] and the latter’s many [movable] frets, were the instruments used in the teaching of the theory of musical modes (echoe) and intervals in the past.”

The term psaltery was general in ancient Hellas, had no relation with the religious psalms and referred to all string instruments played directly with the fingers without a plectrum. Included in the same category were, among others, the nabla, simicium and trígonon (harp). As a rule, they were multi-string instruments, some of them not “psalteries” for they were played with a plectrum. The most impressive of the latter was perhaps the sambuca that was more than one metre high and looked like a homonymous siege engine.

Harpist (Trígonon player) of Keros

It seems that the instruments of this numerous family, especially those with many strings, did not differ much – at least for the non-connoisseurs – and thus many people confused them. However, some of them were played upright evolving into the harp, while others were used horizontally and ended up as the qanun and santur. These instruments were known and in use in Greece before it became… Greece, that is, since the (pro-Hellenic) early Bronze Age of the 3rd millennium BCE. The clearest proof is the Harpist (Trígonon player) of Keros, a beautiful Cycladic figurine dating to 2800-2300 BCE.

Despite these instruments’ long history in the Greek world, Plato and some other philosophers condemned them as unmanly, while Aristotle‘s pupil, Aristoxenus of Tarentum, the so-called Musician, a most important figure in the area of music theory in ancient Hellas, one of the pioneers of musicology, as we would say today, described them as έκφυλα, that is alien – in the word’s literal sense and not the metaphorical that’s been left to us (degenerate).

Of course, what’s interesting here is not a moral evaluation but the origin of these instruments. There is enough evidence, albeit unclear, that seems to point to an Asian or Thracian origin (what Strabo has said). More tangible are the archeological finds with a plethora of depictions of harpists excavated in the Near East – mainly in Egypt and Mesopotamia. The Harpist of Keros is unique, but only as an exquisite work of visual art…

The name of a similar instrument called phoenix, originating probably in Phoenicia, points to the same direction. But the mentality peculiar to a good number of Modern Greeks was also widespread in ancient Hellas. Thus, the Delian poet Semus, based on the well-known saying and established notion that “there’s no place like home”, claimed that the phoenix was so called because its arms were constructed of Delian “phoenix” (palm tree in Greek). What remains, indeed, out of this claim is that in his time the islet was not only inhabited and not barren as it is today, but that there was also vegetation including palm trees!

Epigonion

Based on the same “logic”, it was argued that another multi-string instrument, the epigónion, was so named after its inventor, Epigonus of Ambracia, a musician of the 6th century BCE. It took an expert of musicology such as Curt Sachs to bring forth the apparent etymology of the word (επί = on + γόνυ = knee) as the musician placed the instrument on his knee(s).

Qanun, on the other hand, was the name of the monochord, an instrument with just one string, used mostly by music theorists to determine the mathematical relations of sounds (from κανών = law, rule, in Hellenic), usually called as the Pythagorean qanun, for its invention was attributed to Pythagoras. The great Samian philosopher, mathematician and music theorist of the 6th century BCE, however, before going to the Occident to set up his school in Crotone of Magna Graecia, had travelled around a lot in the Orient and become familiar with the achievements of the Assyro–Babylonians and Egyptians in the above areas.

Pollux, who has instructed us about the origin of the tríchordon (pandura), says now that this simple instrument, the monochord, has been an Arab invention. On his part, Nicomachus of Gerasa, a Pythagorean mathematician and music theorist of the 2nd century CE, writes that the monochord is often called phánduros – that is, pandura. It is not known if the monochord qanun was the starting point of an evolution that led to the tanbur and quanun. But anyway that’s how we have come full circle back to the tríchordon, the ancestor of the thambura and the rest of the lutes with long necks we have already seen (see Voyage 6).

Sailor playing laouto

“The santur, a multi-string pectis, is structured on tempered semitones”, Karas goes on… bombarding us while he presents the instruments accompanying the Songs of Constantinople and the Sea of Marmara. “The oud, a fretless medieval guitar, with its tuning based on the ‘sýstêma ametábolon’ of antiquity (a tone and three or four synêmména tetrachords), shows its Hellenic origin. The laouto, an ancient Greek and Byzantine mágadis (its double strings conform to ‘diapason’), is tuned in fifths.”

The fact that the santur is played with tempered intervals in Hellas, as in the rest of Europe – that is, with “alien” and artificial intervals that meet the requirements of European polyphony and not of the Greek “national music” – would at least be expected to frustrate Karas. But he just passed by… Note that in the instrument’s cradle, Iran, the so-called “100-string” santur is tuned according to the intervals of the modes to be played.^(b)

• ^(b) San-tur: cent (hundred) and tar (string) – although the classical Persian santur has “only” 72 strings.

Santur

The pectis and mágadis, which Karas identified with the santur and laouto respectively, were two similar multi-string psalteries of Lydian or Thracian origin. If we believe Aristoxenus, “they were one and the same instrument”. They said that the first musician to use the pectis was the Lesbian Sappho (around 630-570 BCE). As he lived in the 4th century BCE under the same culture that brought forth these instruments, Aristoxenus had the reliable information, but also the “legitimate right”, to identify these instruments. Where did Karas of the 20th century CE find this right? He obviously acted arbitrarily trying to defend Hellas’ “national interest”!

For the same reasons – that is, in order to demonstrate the “unbroken continuity” between ancient and modern Greece – Karas identified the oud with the medieval guitar. The Asian (Assyrian) cithara (kithara) is already known to us together with its genealogical tree (see Voyage 4). The sad truth is that, in the sense that Karas wished for, neither the cithara-guitar nor the oud or laouto were Hellenic. The latter, in fact, etymologically and organologically, comes from the Arabic oud (al oud > laoud) – which in turn also originates in Persia…

Claiming that this instrument had a Greek character (and denying that this character was Arabo-Persian), Karas invoked its “tuning based on the ‘sýstêma ametábolon’ with synêmména tetrachords”^(c) – presenting the reader with something impressively grandiose and sufficiently incomprehensible! Personally, I think that these systems confuse, rather than enlighten, the ordinary music lovers. So I suggest that we pass them by. But the same does not apply to diapason.

• ^(c) The tetrachords of the sýstêma téleion ametábolon can be either synêmména (attached) or diezeugmena (“divorced”, detached).

Mágadis-pectis

The mágadis, as well as other multi-string instruments, had its strings in double courses tuned in octaves (e.g. RE-re) that the ancients called “διὰ πασῶν” (diá pasôn). The verb “μαγαδίζειν” (mágadis style) denoted a technique of playing a melody in octaves. This is the way the Arabs play the qanun nowadays. According to some writers, the term mágadis (which also defined a kind of aulos) came from the word magás, meaning the bridge of a string instrument. The historian Duris, however, attributed it to a Thracian musician called Magdis.

The ancient Hellenic musical term diapason is just one of all those the Westerners adopted to develop and give prestige to their music. Once the delightful daughter of the Muses, the Greek Music, became… cosmopolitan passing to all the languages of the world, it was natural that she would be accompanied by her terminology – but with the original meaning of the terms altered more or less. A well-known “victim” of this adoption is harmony. Consulting a musical dictionary you are about to read:

“Harmony: two or more notes sounding together; the vertical dimension of music. It appears around the 9th century CE, when we have the first polyphonic compositions. Until then music is monophonic, that is, based on a melody with no harmony at all…”!^(d)

• ^(d) It should have been written “three or more notes”, because if only two notes sound together, there’s “no [Occidental] harmony at all”! The human beings e.g. have always sung “mágadis style”, in octaves, because men’s voices sound in a lower register than those of women and children. Even if it is monophony, it’s still “two notes sounding together”. The same happens in the case of a drone or ison. Note that the traditional polyphony in Europe, Africa and Oceania is undoubtedly older than the erudite West European polyphony.

Apollo and the Muses

How comes, you wonder, that the ancient Hellenes invented a term for something that they did not have?(!) Searching for an answer, you conclude that harmony for them was any of the several arrangements of notes within an octave, in a system where its parts were connected in such a way as to form a perfect whole (hence harmony) – that is, it was the mode, echos, ‘route’, maqam, dastgāh or raga. Thus, harmony in modal music is not about notes sounding together, but about the relationship of any note with those that have preceded it and the others that follow, in a system structured dynamically and horizontally rather than statically and vertically.

Harmony for the ancient Hellenes was any arrangement of notes within an octave. Thus, harmony in modal music is about the relationship of any note with those that have preceded it and the others that follow.
Polyphony is nothing unique. It appears whenever there is no space for microtones in music.

Women musicians, Al-Andalus (Andalusia)

But not even polyphony originated in the Occident. We have seen that polyphony is nothing unique. Just think of how many kinds of polyphony are still practiced in the area centered on the Balkans e.g. in Epirus and Albania, in Thrace (Greek, Bulgarian or Turkish), in the Caucasus, or in Corsica and Sardinia, and far more in other regions of the world. Polyphony appears whenever there is no space for microtones in music. It’s been inconceivable in the Anatolian music due to the diversity of its intervals, but natural in the Epirotic music and any other based on the pentatonic – that is, the most ancient of the scales, with five degrees (instead of seven) and whole tones without semitones.

The term diapason is related to harmony and derives from the phrase “ἡ διὰ πασῶν τῶν χορδῶν συμφωνία” (the accord through all the notes). That is, it was the eighth, “ἡ καλλίστη συμφωνία” (the best accord), according to Aristoxenus. Later on, the term diapason replaced that of harmony. For the Byzantines it was “ἡ διαοκτώ ἢ δι’ ὀγδόης ἁρμονία” (the harmony through the octave). Today diapason is also a tuning fork or any standard pitch used for tuning.

It could certainly be maintained that not even the concept of music remained unchanged – indeed, this development took place in ancient Greek times. Music as a term appeared for the first time in the 5th century BCE in Pindar’s poetry (Olympian Victory Odes and Hymns) and later in Herodotus’ and Thucydides’ Histories. For a long time this term denoted the combined spiritual and mental performance especially in the arts and letters. As Plato says in The Republic, the body needs exercise while the soul needs music. A “narrower” definition of the term was lyric poetry, that is, poetry with music, melos (melody). Besides, at that time poetry without music was unthinkable.

Women musicians, Egypt

The two arts became independent in the 4th century BCE. It was then that the two terms acquired their current meaning. Previously, of course, poetry denoted creation, construction (ποιεῖν = to create, make). With the special meaning of artistic creation it was first used by Simonides of Ceos (6th-5th century); a poet was thought to be a composer of music. The word music was perhaps invented by Lasus of Hermione (6th century), who was among the first artists that combined the qualities of a musician and a musicologist, having dealt with both the art and science of music.

As for the perception of music, there were two schools: the Pythagorean and the Aristoxenian. Pythagoras disapproved of the appraisal of music through the senses (hearing). The merit of this art, he used to say, is because we can perceive it through the intellect (mind). Aristoxenus, on his part, supported a dual scientific principle: on the one hand, he based himself on the sense of hearing to perceive and appraise the pitch, intervals, etc; and on the other hand he relied on the intellect in order to distinguish the mechanisms of sounds.

Cümbüş

After all these “digressions” (which have been, in part, the… purpose of this Voyage), let’s have a look at some instruments with “negative specifications”, according to Karas. Surprisingly he turned against the cümbüş, or “djimbisi”, as he “Hellenized” it, describing it as a “mixobarbarian [half-barbarian] combination of an Occidental banjo, laouto and oud”, and also complained because “it’s been replacing the oud (the medieval, ancient-style guitar)”… But the only Occidental on the cümbüş is its soundboard (the metallic soundboard of the banjo). Nevertheless, it makes no big difference the way the sound of an instrument is amplified. Its basic part is the neck and the intervals produced by the fingerboard – and the cümbüş is normally fretless: that is, even subtle changes in pitch are possible, as if we play an oud, or a violin. So why such fury?

Additionally, in another outright arbitrariness in the table of contents on the record with Songs of Thasos, Lemnos and Samothrace, Karas renamed the (distasteful to him) bouzouki to… tambourás. Ironically, the producers of a disc with Cretan songs have done… exactly the opposite for commercial reasons, renaming Stelios Foustalieris’ tambourás, the bulgarí, to bouzouki! Why this masquerade? Is it really possible to safeguard any national character with such… “transvestite” disguise?

Thus, according to Karas, the cümbüş is “mixobarbarian” – which reminds me that in ancient Greece, only one out of the four basic “harmonies” (modes) was Hellenic in origin: the Dorian. Two of them, the Lydian and Phrygian, were “barbarian” by birth (coming from Lydia and Phrygia), while the fourth was… “mixobarbarian”: it was the Mixolydian – created, according to Aristoxenus, by Sappho, from whom the tragedians received it, for the pathos of this harmony was appropriate to their plays. As Plutarch commented: “the mixolydian is pathetic, in harmony with the tragedies”. Let alone the etymological origin of the word cümbüş that, according to some claims, is the… absolutely ancient Greek symposium!

In ancient Greece only one out of the four basic modes was Hellenic in origin: the Dorian. The Lydian and Phrygian were “barbarian” by birth, while the fourth was… “mixobarbarian” (half-barbarian): it was the Mixolydian.

Psaltery

All the above, however, are “details” when speaking of Karas, whom I was fortunate enough to enjoy at work during the 3rd and – unfortunately – last musicological symposium in Delphi in 1988. And I can assure you he was an excellent teacher; a real master, and not… yalanci (fake), such as those “tambourás masters” who might have been his pupils (see Voyage 6). That’s why I insist on my criticism, targeting them rather than him. He was indeed a so-called “teacher of the nation” in the field of Greek traditional music – even though this music was never “national”, as he claimed in the title of his society. It’s absolutely certain that when Karas spoke of “national music”, he did not mean… ethnic! So let’s have a look in brief at the relationship between music and nation.

Music is as old as we are: it’s innate in humans. Nations, on the other hand, appeared somewhat recently in human history not in order to fulfill some of man’s inner needs, as music does, but rather for economic and political reasons. I mean, of course, nation states and not ethnicities, which are something different, formed since ancient times, deriving from different human clans and tribes. Therefore, there are no national characteristics in music. Essentially, there is no Hellenic, Turkish, Bulgarian, etc music. When we use national attributes we simply mean that a piece e.g. has Greek lyrics, if it is a song, or that its composer is Greek. In fact, far too many “Hellenic” songs have actually nothing to do with traditional music genres in Hellas (they could be described as rock, tango, mambo, etc), no matter if they have Greek lyrics or composers.

There are no national characteristics in music.
Far too many “Hellenic” songs have nothing to do with traditional music genres in Hellas, no matter if they have Greek lyrics or composers.
Folk music is not national but ethnic. Erudite music is mostly multinational.

Indian itinerary musician, by Shagufta Mehdi

Folk music is born as an idiom in areas smaller than the present nation states, under conditions of agricultural natural economy – areas which are generally divided among neighbouring nation states (e.g. Thrace is divided into three). The pace of its development, as well as the inflow of outside influence, is determined by the geography of each region. That’s how musical idioms are articulated. A “problem” arises due to the lack of racial “purity” in these areas, as they are inhabited by people of various ethnicities, each one with its own peculiarities, which are gradually digested into a common idiom, though they retain certain autonomy. As we have seen (see Voyage 4), the more the ethnicities, the richer the idioms. Therefore, folk music is not national but ethnic.

Erudite music, on the other hand, has been a collective effort of elite musicians streaming into the metropolises of multinational empires. Because of the involvement of artists from several nationalities or ethnicities, each with its own background, this music is mostly multinational (or transnational, but never international). The same even applies to the classical music of Europe, even if, broadly speaking, national borders had been drawn there before the period of its great acme.

“National schools”, in conclusion, appear much later employing ethnic sound colours but also European erudite music forms. Therefore, there is no national character even in “national schools”. A good example is Modest Mussorgsky’s celebrated suite Pictures at an Exhibition, one of the masterpieces of Russian “national school”: it was orchestrated in an exemplary fashion by Maurice Ravel, one of the pioneers of French “national school”, and in this form it became a favourite all over the world. Moreover, the half-Basque Ravel, born in a town near Spain, composed many works based on Spanish “national school”…

In the final analysis, we should not care much about the alleged national character or origin of music or its instruments. Such thoughts distract our attention from the essence of the matter, which is music itself. After all, who can trace its evolution? Who was the first person who noticed that a tense bowstring produces a sound? Who then found that the sound is amplified if there is something hollow to function as a soundboard?

Such discoveries are as old as man. So they should have taken place in Africa, the cradle of the human race. What does this mean? That music and its instruments are African-born? Of course not! It just means that in various periods of time, in several areas of the world, we can observe the emergence of the same instruments more or less, for they are based on the same natural laws.

In various times and spaces we observe the emergence of the same instruments more or less for they are based on the same natural laws.

The reconstructed silver lyre of Ur in Mesopotamia

Thus, all such “national” claims have ulterior motives, because music is also older than ownership, not only than nations. Besides, things are very simple – provided that we’ve got rid of the blinders of “ancestor-mania”, and that sense, even if it’s common, has prevailed:

“We say that a musical instrument belongs to the folk tradition of a country when its people have sung with this instrument their aspirations and sorrows, especially in times-watersheds in their history,” Phoebus Anogianakis writes with simplicity and clarity, cutting the… Gordian Knot, bringing us down to earth from the nebulae of the ancients’ exaltation, and at the same time giving us the key so as to go deeper into the subject.

“Ethnomusicology recognizes that an instrument belongs to the folk tradition of a country based on this criterion. What we are mainly interested in is if this musical instrument has been loved and widely used by the people of this country, and also made by local craftsmen or by the local folk musicians themselves – no matter if this instrument has come from outside, from another country, nearby or distant.”

Only based on the above approach, therefore, we can say that the lyre and cithara, the mágadis and tríchordon, were Greek instruments. Because, in truth, all instruments used in ancient Hellas were imported from the Orient – except one: an instrument we know for sure that was invented by Greeks, not during the Classical but in the Hellenistic period and, moreover, outside Greece, in Alexandria, Egypt, the largest centre of Hellenism in the post-classical era. Ironically, this unique instrument with a “Greek patent” is not in use in Hellas anymore and has since been glorified in the hands of some Westerners – prominently those of Johann Sebastian Bach…

All instruments used in ancient Hellas were imported from the Orient – except the hydraulis (pipe organ) that was invented by Greeks but is not in use in Hellas anymore…

Hydraulis, Dion, 1st century BCE

This instrument was the hydraulis, the water organ, today’s pipe organ, in its embryonic form. Its inventor was the Alexandrian engineer Ctesibius in the 3rd century BCE. Sometimes the invention is attributed to his contemporary Archimedes, though his contribution should have been indirect, due to the achievements of his ingenious mind, as he was the most important figure in the realm of science in the ancient world. Quite rightly these Greek scientists are thought of as the spiritual fathers of Leonardo da Vinci and so many other inventive minds of Europe from the Renaissance onwards.

Ctesibius apparently based himself on the hydraulic inventions and applications of the Syracusan, mainly on Archimedean hydraulic clocks. Along with hydraulics, Ctesibius studied pneumatics – the science dealing with pneuma, that is, air, and its several applications.^(e) In fact, he is considered as the… pneumatic (spiritual) father of this science, as he proved what others had already observed: that invisible air is something material.

Along with hydraulics, Ctesibius studied pneumatics – the science dealing with pneuma, that is, air.

• ^(e) Hydraulics and pneumatics are sister sciences: the former deals with liquids, the latter with gases.

Let me remark en passant that the rapid decline of the Greek language, due to the decline of Hellenism, in parallel with the spread of Christianity, had as a result a decline also in the semantics of ancient terms such as pneuma (breath), where only connotations contrasting with matter (i.e. mind, intellect, soul) have survived. The ancient pneuma, you see, was lost as soon as it turned into… “Holy Pneuma (Spirit or Ghost)”! In spite of all the Alexandrian treatises on pneumatics, there is no such entry in Modern Greek dictionaries…^(f)

A hydraulis excavated at Aquincum (modern Budapest) in 1931

• ^(f) Although Hellenic is the world’s oldest recorded living language, the original meaning of the word pneumatic (of or relating to air, breath) was lost in Modern Greek, except in the so-called pneumatic tools (using air pressure). Note that in Romance languages we can find the same word (Italian pneumatico, French and Portuguese pneu, Spanish neumático) meaning pneumatic tyre. In Modern Greek, on the other hand, the relevant term inner tube is called sambrela, which is a loan from French (chambre à air). Thus, for the same thing more or less, some “barbarians” use a Hellenic word; the Greeks have a French loan instead…

Well, what pneumatics anyway? After all, no work of Ctesibius has survived. The opposite is true in the case of a later engineer that at least a part of his work is extant – although he remains similarly inconspicuous among the Hellenes. He was an Alexandrian, as well, called Hero(n), and lived sometime between the 3rd century BCE and the 1st century CE. Apart from his numerous wonderful inventions – e.g. his aeolipile or steam engine, a windwheel, and also gates that opened automatically – he perfected Ctesibius’ water organ based on the principles of pneumatics. However, if the Modern Greeks hear his name by chance and wish to learn more about him, they are obliged to consult foreign publications, since his treatises have never been published in Hellas…

The work of the Alexandrian engineers could not go unnoticed in Rome or Constantinople that were great powers. Among other inventions the Byzantine scientists admired Hero’s “automata” and perfected them. There were several such mechanisms in the palaces (golden plane trees with singing birds, lions and other wild animals roaring while turning their necks, griffins flapping their wings, etc) in order to impress foreign visitors.

Church (pipe) organ

The hydraulic organ was equally impressive; thus the musical instrument ended up… diplomatic. In the 8th century, the Byzantine emperor Constantine V, the so-called… Copronymus,^(g) donated an organ to the Frankish king Pepin the… Short – the instrument is now known all over the world by the Greek term organ (meaning instrument among other things) – and what followed is common knowledge more or less. You can see the potential impact of gifts exchanged between “Blue bloods” on the history of music: no matter if diplomacy has never promoted culture (see Voyage 1), politics influences its development – usually negatively.

• ^(g) Copronymus, meaning dung-christened! Obviously, he was… “rewarded” with this epithet by ecclesiastical circles because he was an iconoclast. They said that he supposedly… stooled in the font during baptism! The usual Christian venom…

Political history, however, developed in another direction. Despite the Byzantine gifts to the Occident, the underlying Schism between the Churches was formalized,^(h) the Holy See declared a “holy war” against the “infidels” (probably under the sound of… pipe organs), and that’s how the Crusades began leading to the first fall of Constantinople, since the Orthodox Christians were included among the “infidels” – or else among the “heretics” who are always… worse than the “infidels”! The control of the Orient necessitated the overthrow of “Romanía” and the division of the booty between the Frankish plunderers and their Venetian instigators.

• ^(h) How is it possible a self-advertised “religion of love” to be plagued by an avalanche of schisms? As usual, Christianity emerges as the champion in this field, as well, followed by the other monotheistic religions, Judaism and Islam.

It was the beginning of the end, a crucial turning point, a development that left its indelible stamp on the history of not only the Mediterranean, or even Europe, but also the whole world, because since then everything changed. It marked the end of the epoch that began in the Near East during the Neolithic era, with the birth of civilization, and the Mediterranean as the epicentre of history. Mare nostrum was de facto marginalized. Its fortunes would since be governed by non-Mediterranean powers.

The Crusades (1096-1204): 1st (purple route), 2nd (green), 3rd (red) and 4th Crusade (orange): it started from Venice and ended in Constantinople, the ultimate goal of Venetians and Franks.

As usual, the perpetrators made sure of their “absolution” through their propaganda that even their victims reproduce – perhaps because perpetrators and victims are now “allies”, “partners”! Whitewashing first became grotesque (with all those… “Crusades for peace” that constitute the zenith of hypocrisy) and then macabre – as soon as bombs started falling in the first… “Humanitarian war” in history!

Let’s open our dictionaries again: the Crusaders have been “Medieval warriors who took part in the campaigns of Western Christians against people of another faith mainly for the liberation of the Holy Land”! Who from? Who else but the “infidels”, the Muslims. The Greek lexicographers and others do not seem to bother at all that these lands have been equally holy for Islam, or that the Muslims are rather more faithful than the Christians. I honestly cannot understand how comes that Greek historians portray the Crusaders as “liberators” of Jerusalem in 1099, and at the same time as “conquerors” of Constantinople in 1204…

Crusaders: “liberators” of Jerusalem, but “conquerors” of Constantinople!
Whitewashing first became grotesque (with all those… “Crusades for peace”) and then macabre – as soon as bombs started falling in the first… “Humanitarian war” in history!

The Capture of Constantinople in 1204, by Domenico Robusti Tintoretto

We may have deviated from our path, but in essence our subject dealt not so much with the Thracian or Asian origin of music, as with the futility of the ancients’ exaltation, and especially of “ancestor-mania”, which is nothing but empty words. See, for example, the hydraulis we were lucky enough to excavate at Dion:⁽ⁱ⁾ It was initially announced that the instrument was polyphonic. Doesn’t this mean that the music of late antiquity was also polyphonic? Was there a thorough research in advance, or such a conclusion was reported lightheartedly? The aim was to restore the instrument or to revamp it in the font of European polyphony?

• ⁽ⁱ⁾ A tomb stele with a depiction of nabla was also found at Dion.

A diaulos player in a symposium, by Euaion painter

Can we possibly assume that the ancient musicians we see depicted so often with diaulos (double aulos) played in… thirds?^(j) Or that on the multi-reed syrinx (Pan pipe) they could play… chords? It is inconceivable to me that the hydraulis can be suitable for… Bach’s Toccata and Fugue, exactly as we fail to perform pieces of modal music on the pipe organ. Each instrument is made based on the specifications of the kind of music which is prescribed for.

• ^(j) The now dominant two-note consonance, the third, was considered as dissonance and cacophony by ancient Hellenes and Byzantines alike.

“Big deal”, is the cynics’ answer. Some enthusiasts of the… Jurassic Park seem determined to make up for the water organ’s lost time, mastering the repertoire of the pipe organ and also composing new music especially for the hydraulis. And what we do is to put the blame solely on such… cloners!

• >> Voyage 9. “DO NOT MALTREAT OUR MUSIC!”
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